April 2017

April 30, 2017

All this is rather self-indulgent. Therefore, unnecessary. Hence, poetry.

Here is a sonnet I wrote recently. It may not meet all the exacting standards such as iambic pentameter but it attempts to be a sonnet. It was prompted by a painting of mine titled ‘Camouflage Shore’. I told you all this is rather self-indulgent.

Like I always say, you don’t pay me to read this blog. This is all you get for free.

The last two lines are a tribute to the great poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s memorable lines:

April 29, 2017

I have frequently wondered about how Claude Monet might have painted visuals depicting romantic songs from the Hindi cinema of the 1960s. They were invariably full of stunning floral diversity and colors that would have lent themselves perfectly to Monet’s extraordinary eye for fleeting colorful light.

I have just begun a possible series of what I think Monet might have done. The one above is, of course, two water colors and one digital work merged digitally.They were not intended to be together. But as I go about completing the flowery vista that the woman in pink is overlooking, I thought it might be interesting to see how the presence of women might look like. I am hesitant to add human figures to the actual final painting.

The attempt here is to capture the exuberant colors that those songs frequently filmed. More often than not these songs were shot in Kashmir which during spring is explodes with flowers of all colors. Why am I telling you all this? Well, why do I tell you anything at all? Because someone somewhere might find it engaging for a few moments.

April 28, 2017

As someone who will not get paid even four dollars for a speech I certainly marvel at former President Barack Obama’s $400,000 a speech price tag. I am not sure what profundity he might offer for that kind of money but anything short of deliverance would feel like being swindled.

The news of that Obama will get paid that much to speak at a Wall Street conference being hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald LP has caused both consternation and even some outrage among his supporters. The money is being paid to hear his views on health care sometime in September, according to media reports.

Some of the comments I have read say that the Obamas do not need the money, especially because of their massive $65 million joint book deal with Penguin Random House. I am not yet ready to jump in and criticize them on the speaking fee because it is entirely possible that the former president would direct it to a charity of his choice. Perhaps he is setting up one that could be funded exclusively by the money earned as a public speaker. We do not know his motivation. Even if the motivation is enriching himself personally, I am not sure if it is my place to express any opinion one way or the other.

I think part of the disappointment over the news emanates from people having invested an excessive amount of nobility in Obama. We all have feet of clay; it is just that some of us are very well shod. Many of us are even almost entirely made of clay and poorly clothed to boot. Let me not stretch the metaphor so much that it snaps. You get my drift.

Corporations that choose to pay former presidents and other celebrities such massive sums for speeches do not do so because they are captivated by their wisdom. It is part influence buying, part corporate brand promotion and part because they have obscene amounts of profit lying around. There is always a calculation of return on investment when such speaking fees are doled out. That return could be both influence and brand promotion. I am not so optimistic as to say that such high amounts are paid because of the breathtakingly uplifting content of what these people speak.

There are heavyweight detractors such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who are reportedly unhappy, saying they are troubled by it. Warren in particular has pointed out the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute anyone of consequence on Wall Street for their involvement in the grave financial crisis that he inherited. She has also pointed out that Obama picked his economic team from Wall Street. There will be those who might choose to view such high speaking fees from that very Wall Street as a reward even though it is always hard to make a direction connection. In such cases, perception always trumps reality.

In so much as this is my blog and therefore showcases what I feel, I do not have any particular reaction other than saying that I always expect less of people and oftentimes nothing of them. I attached no nobility to Obama and hence I should not feel let down if he does not show it. He needs and wants money for whatever reasons and that’s that. Also remember, we don’t know yet how he might spend it. He might yet do it on a noble cause.

April 27, 2017

It was sometime in December, 1989. I was on a flight from Mumbai to Delhi after completing an assignment. A couple of minutes before the takeoff a tall man with an imposing figure and with bronze-copper Aviator sunglasses boarded the plane. He unobtrusively found his aisle seat and settled down without much fuss despite the hush he had caused. He was the actor Vinod Khanna seated in the row just before mine.

The pre-takeoff hubbub had fallen silent among the passengers closest to him. He looked larger than his screen presence. His bearing was amiable without being familiar. He knew he was being looked at intently by his fellow passengers. He offered a general hint of a smile at no one in particular. Five minutes after the takeoff he was fast asleep. There was a faint whistling, snoring sound. I could tell because I was in the aisle seat right behind him.

My instinct as a journalist was to wait for him to wake up and then exchange a few words; perhaps fix up an interview. I was particularly interested in his association with Rajneesh who had spoken to me with some fondness about the actor. “For an actor, he is not so self-absorbed,” Rajneesh had told me and stopped before venturing into offering a more detailed view.

About 40 minutes into the flight Khanna was wide awake. He was traveling alone and surprisingly in the economy. The middle seat next to him was left empty, evidently in deference to his stardom. By 1989, he had been one of India’s biggest stars nearly rivaling Amitabh Bachchan. The passenger in Khanna’s row by the window had practically shrunk into an embryo because of the august presence. I saw him look in Khanna’s direction and smile rather obsequiously.

After the refreshments were served—of which Khanna took only coffee and I nothing—did I introduce myself. I was then chief correspondent for South Asia of the India-Abroad News Service wire. He greeted me with a quick smile and hi. I briefly told him why I was seeking an interview—Rajeneesh was mentioned immediately by me—and he gave me his contact number. I returned to my seat. Khanna went back to his quietude occasionally broken by a fan seeking an autograph. Some ten minutes or so later, his head stuck out, turned towards me. He asked, “What did Bhagwan say?” Bhagwan being Rajneesh. “He said for an actor you are not so self-absorbed,” I told him. He laughed and went back to his quiet self.

On landing at Delhi, there was a small retinue of people waiting to pick him up. He had only a carry-on suitcase. Three men who were there to receive him practically dived to relieve him of the suitcase’s burden. That was the only time I saw a touch of stardom to Khanna. He did not even look at who might eventually grab the suitcase as he just let go of it. All three men caught it before it could touch the floor.

He melted away into the exit.

I never called him for an interview. I also never met him after that.

With his passing today at the age of 70, Hindi cinema loses an outstanding talent. His performances were almost invariably competent no matter what the quality of the film. His obvious good looks did not overwhelm his intrinsic artistry.

It is entirely possible that I would have enjoyed an interview with Khanna but that short interaction onboard an Indian Airlines flight was good enough for me.

April 26, 2017

A visualization of Cassini’s crossing between Saturn and its rings. (Image: Frame from NASA video)

As NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn begins what has been described as a “grand finale” of crashing into the gas giant, a phrase that keeps ringing in my ears is the Indian astrological construct “Shani ki mahadasha” or “Shani ni mahadasha” (The position of Saturn in one’s birth chart). Depending on where its position is at the time of one’s birth the gas giant is believed by Indian astrologers to exercise great, often malignant, influence on an individual’s life. That is the belief. Now on to real science.

On September 15 this year Cassini will be deliberately crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere as it runs out of fuel after a 20-year-long mission. It was launched on October 15, 1997. During its mission Cassini has produced a treasure trove on science about Saturn and its moons, particularly the two most exciting Titan and Enceladus, the two most promising places for search for life in our solar system. In fact, as part of the Cassini mission a probe called Huygens landed on Titan in January 2005. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon.

Before it eventually crashes and burns Cassini made its 127th close approach to Titan on April 21, according to NASA, passing within 608 miles of the moon. "Cassini's up-close exploration of Titan is now behind us, but the rich volume of data the spacecraft has collected will fuel scientific study for decades to come," Linda Spilker, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was quoted as saying by a NASA release.

Cassini’s fiery end is a fait accompli. "With this flyby we're committed to the Grand Finale," as Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said. "The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path, so that even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15 no matter what."

As part of that final maneuver, Cassini made the first crossing between Saturn and its rings early this morning. It is expected to fly between the rings and Saturn’s cloud tops another 21 times before crashing. Considering that Cassini has spent 13 years at Saturn out of its total 20 after reaching there in July 2004, it has been quite a love affair between the spacecraft and the planet maligned in astrology for its malignant influences.

People forget the extraordinary level of scientific and engineering accomplishment behind the impending crash. Cassini is a billion miles away from us and now whizzing through at 70,000 miles per hour in the 1200-mile gap between the planet and its rings. That requires a level of precision that is beyond comprehension for most. It takes between 68 and 84 minutes for radio signals to travel one way between Earth and Cassini. In effect NASA scientists radio instructions to Cassini and then wait for over two hours to find out whether what they instructed was understood and carried out. The fact that it successfully completed its first crossing means it is working.

Apart from everything else the mission scientists have to be sure that Cassini’s crossings do not encounter even a tiny dust particle because at that speed any hit could be catastrophic. So even when you want to crash, you crash on your terms and not because some silly dust particle hit you.

To end it on some levity, Cassini will soon experience its “Shani Mahadasha.”

April 25, 2017

A simulated view of our solar system from Voyager 1, now 20 billion kilometers from us. (Image: NASA Eyes)

I was approaching my 17th year when NASA launched Voyagers 1 & 2. Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 while Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977. That’s right, 2 was launched before 1. Nearly four decades later Voyager 1 is over 20 billion kilometers from us and Voyager 2 over 17 billion kilometers.

If you wanted to escape farthest from Earth, you have missed the bus by nearly 40 years.These two are the farthest human-made objects from Earth and are expected to wander through space until such time as they fully degenerate, highly unlikely without some catastrophic encounter or process.

The reason I mentioned my age when the Voyagers were launched was because at 56 I feel some regret at having missed the bus. The two spacecraft are well out of our solar system and into early interstellar space. If you were traveling on Voyager 1 the sun and its planets would look like bright blob of light in the photograph below. Both satellites are still communicating with NASA although the minimum it takes for a signal to travel one way is over 15 hours to Voyager 2 and over 19 hours to 1.

For me the immediate provocation for thinking of the Voyagers is the sheer impracticability of my bill collectors to reach me had I been on one of them. This is presuming I would still be alive. I may be alive here on Earth after 40 years but cannot be sure if that would have been the case on Voyagers.

A simulated view of our solar system from Voyager 1, now 20 billion kilometers from us. (Image: NASA Eyes)

On my occasional visit to NASA’s terrific tool Eyes on the Solar System this morning, I find that Voyager 1 is going away at 38,000 miles or over 60,000 kilometers an hour. Even at that speed it is barely out of the empire of the sun even though it is now in early interstellar space.

Both Voyagers contain a gold-plated audio-visual disc loaded with photographs of Earth, some basic scientific information and human greetings spoken in several languages. This is just in case some advanced civilization manages to capture one of them and figure out a way to play the disc.

According to NASA the Voyagers have enough power and fuel to operate until at least 2020. By then Voyager 1 will be 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion KM) from the sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion KM).

Heliosphere, a bubble of solar wind created by magnetic material from the sun, is calculated to stretch 23 million miles or nearly 37 billion kilometers. That means the Voyagers are still experiencing some of it. These are staggering figures and they describe only a mediocre solar system inside a single mediocre galaxy.

It strikes me that while the Voyagers have really traveled so far in the past close to 40 years, civilizationally humans on Earth appear to have regressed.

Charulata, of course, has been heralded as Ray’s most complete film in the sense that it is radiant with all cinematic elements executed to their perfection. While that is true, I find Jalsaghar often equally exquisite.

To mark the anniversary I republish a piece I wrote on August 15, 2013. I have since watched the whole film a few times.

August 15, 2013

I could have watched Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece ‘Charulata’ any time since I came of age some 35 years ago. I am getting around to doing it only now. There was no reason not to watch it all these years just as there is no particular provocation to watch it now. It just happened.

My film connoisseur friends tell me that they first watched it with considerable trepidation because it has been described as Ray’s most complete film. It has also been called a textbook film in that those aspiring to learn filmmaking should watch it before they let their foolhardiness about the medium of cinema make them do something rash. I had no such trepidation because a) I have no trepidation and b) I am quite artlessly unaware of greatness.

It is not my intention to review ‘Charulata’ because I see no point in reviewing anything. An artist has created something and that’s that. I do, however, want to make a few observations. In keeping with my weakness for the useless I have to get this bit out of my system. Of course, it has zero impact on Ray’s artistry generally and the film’s near perfection particularly. Early on in the film as Ray establishes Charulata’s (Madhabi Mukherjee) sense of loneliness, there is a scene where she is walking through one of her mansion’s many rooms. When she goes through this particular room (See the picture above), my eye caught a trivial detail. The chair’s upholstery and the wallpaper seem to have the same design.

In fact, I am 93.7 percent certain that they are the same design and perhaps even the same fabric. (The fabric part, I am 46.85 percent sure). My reaction was that of a judge on HGTV’s reality show ‘Design Star’. That alone should disqualify me from further writing about a movie, let alone ‘Charulata.’ My point is I do notice everything.

The chair’s upholstery and the wallpaper

Coming back to the film which I watched on Hulu as part of their Criterion collection, I am watching it in bits and pieces as an experiment. A sort of juxtaposition of my 21st century existence against the 19th century ambience. Ray does a superb job of capturing Charu’s life tethered to loneliness as she tries various ways to free herself.

Her husband, Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee), is a passionate newspaper editor and publisher of ‘The Sentinel’ during the height of the British Raj in the 1870s. His infectious faith in the power of the newspaper feels charming in the current environment when newspapers get snapped up by tech billionaires with spare change. Not that there is anything wrong with it.

There is a scene where Bhupati tells his brother-in-law Umapada (Shyamlal Ghoshal) that the newspaper is his mistress, “Your sister’s rival” but he should not tell her that. Who could imagine in this day and age that a newspaper could trump a beautiful woman?

Left, Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee) with Umapada (Shyamlal Ghoshal)

A device that Ray uses to portray Charu’s loneliness is her field glasses in early scenes. There is a lovely, if somewhat contrived, unfolding of street life as seen through her mansion’s many windows using the field glasses. There is the inevitable monkey man, a street performer with a couple of moderately trained monkeys that you still in Indian towns, whom she looks at with mild amusement. Moments later she trains the field glasses on her husband who walks past her utterly preoccupied with his newspaper and does not even notice her. As she looks at him through the field glasses we still hear the monkey man playing his drum (called damroo). Far be it for me to second-guess Ray but I believe the symbolism of that shot has to do with how distant and unconnected he is from her, quite like the street performer and his two simian companions. (Or I could be spectacularly wrong about the whole symbolism).

I have so far watched about 40 minutes of the film spread over a few hours. This morning before writing this post I saw a scene in the unkempt garden of the mansion where Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), Bhupati’s fetchingly free spirited cousin brother-in-law whose help he seeks to mentor Charu, and Charu are. Charu is on a swing and asks Amal to give her a push. “Just once and then I can manage alone” says the subtitle. “New woman, this is going too far,” says Amal in mock disapproval as if she is being too forward by asking another man to push the swing. “What’s the harm in a push?” she says. You can experience the nascence of the subtle attraction between the two.

So far it has been an exquisite experience watching this languidly unfolding story. It does transport you to the late 19th century. I did slow down to 20 percent of my normal speed to sync myself with the film’s mood. That’s a good thing.

Let me close with a tangential connection that I discovered soon after the film started. I had seen only two Ray films until now. ‘Sadgati’ and ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi.’ I watch ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ from time to time because I like it enough to do so. In that film there is a song that Awadh’s (Lucknow’s) poet-nawab Wajid Ali Shah sings gently. It goes “Hum chhod chale Lucknow nagri…” I was pleasantly surprised to hear the character of Amal singing the same song in ‘Charulata’ as well. There is a gap of 13 years between ‘Charulata’ (1964) and ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ (1977). Of course, this means nothing in particular. For me though, it completes a circle.

April 23, 2017

Yesterday marked the 113th birth anniversary of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I did the following piece for the IANS wire which was widely carried.

By Mayank Chhaya

In the midst of heightened posturing by North Korea over a potential thermonuclear war falls today (April 22) the 113th birth anniversary of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a father of the first atomic bomb in 1945.

While an actual thermonuclear war may not come to be, Oppenheimer’s remarkable clarity over the bomb’s creation and justifiability of its use followed by philosophical ambiguity can all be traced to his passionate lifelong fascination for the Bhagavad Gita.

On his birth anniversary today perhaps the most quoted expression of his would be what he took from Krishna as telling Arjuna in the Gita, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

According to many scholars, Oppenheimer had internalized the core message of the Gita, a thumbed copy of which he famously kept handy by his work desk. He was known to gift its English translation to his friends and others. Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit in 1933 and read the Gita in the original language first.

James A. Hijiya, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, in his remarkable work ‘The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer’ likens Oppenheimer to the great warrior of the Mahabharata, Arjuna. “For an uncertain soldier like Oppenheimer, nervously fashioning his own atomic “arrow,” Arjuna sets a good example. Arjuna is fighting to install his eldest brother, Yudhishthira, as ruler of the kingdom and emperor of the known world, and to thwart the pretensions of their cousin Duryodhana. Yudhishthira is a better man and ruler than Duryodhana, who is motivated by ferocious envy and has resorted to fraud and attempted murder of his cousins to gain the throne,” Professor Hijiya writes.

“Krishna’s message to Arjuna is clear: you must fight. To Oppenheimer the message would have seemed equally clear. If it was proper for Arjuna to kill his own friends and relatives in a squabble over the inheritance of a kingdom, then how could it be wrong for Oppenheimer to build a weapon to kill Germans and Japanese whose governments were trying to conquer the world?” he says.

Oppenheimer’s engagement with the Gita was active during the conception and execution of the Manhattan Project from 1941 onward that created the world’s first atomic bomb tested on July 16, 1945 at Trinity Site near Alamogordo in New Mexico. According to Hijiya, in April, 1945 during a memorial service for President Franklin Roosevelt, Oppenheimer quoted this from the book: “Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.”

The Sanskrit verse in question that captured Oppenheimer’s imagination in the aftermath of the successful test was "Kalo'smi loka-ksaya-krt pravrddho", which has been variously translated. While “Kal” has generally been interpreted as Time and therefore Time being the great destroyer of worlds, there is a fairly widespread interpretation in the Western scholarship about Kal being Death by its very implication. Hence the most popular transliteration as used by Oppenheimer, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Among the Indian scholars the more acceptable translation has been, “I am terrible time, the destroyer of all beings in all worlds.”

Oppenheimer credited two other books, apart from the Gita, as having influenced him. They were Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Eliot’s Waste Land. However, by some consensus the Gita appeared to have impacted him at both rational/practical level as well as at much deeper philosophical level.

It has been argued by scholars such as Professor Hijiya that Oppenheimer’s approach to the atomic bomb was that of doing his duty as part of his dharma as prescribed in the Gita. Professor Hijiya describes it thus: “Just as Arjuna and Yudhishthira honored their elders by submitting to their decisions, even when those decisions were wrong, so did Oppenheimer yield to those he recognized as his political and military superiors. He was a scientist, so it was his duty to make judgments on scientific matters, like how to build the bomb. But when it came to politics and war, he refused to oppose decisions made by people seemingly more qualified than himself. He would not venture outside his dharma.”

Oppenheimer’s dispassionate, almost coldly detached acquiescence to the broader politics of the atomic bomb has been interpreted as a direct result of the way he digested the Gita. He saw it purely in terms of his duty as a scientist and perhaps nothing more.

Much has been written about whether Oppenheimer came to regret having pioneered the atomic bomb. There appears to be considerable agreement that he did not feel remorse in any manifest sort of way. Even during the first successful test in 1945 he was said to have thought of this line from the Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.” This was notwithstanding his full understanding of the potential for death and destruction that the enormous power could and would unleash.

It was clear to those involved in the Manhattan project, particularly someone at its helm like Oppenheimer, that the eventual purpose of the bomb was to be deployed as a weapon very soon. It was in that context that the physicist’s dependence on the Gita as his guide ought to be viewed.

April 22, 2017

On Earth Day today it is important to remember that Earth does not give a fuck about our well-being. It is for us to do our damnedest to ensure that we remain worthy of its munificence and viable for its equilibrium.

I have written this before—about how Nature, Earth as it were, has no stake in human survival. One always knew that Nature has no direct stake in sentient well-being. It does what it must do irrespective of its consequences on life. It might be useful to repeat some of those observations on Earth Day. Remember that I use Nature as something interchangeable with Earth here.

For me personally, once a native of Ahmedabad where summer heat can nearly destroy conscience, the cold in Chicago is always a reminder that it is us, sentient life that must adapt to Nature and not Nature to us. That is because Nature is inherently detached and unemotional even if people curiously ennoble it with the sobriquet Mother. Its affections, if there are any at all, are not motherly by any imagination.

My basic point has been that we are incidental to Nature whose primary purpose or for that matter any purpose is not to ensure that humans survive and flourish. At best we are an unintended consequence of the enormously complex natural forces that have existed since the existence of the planet over the past four and half billion years. Nature does not cradle us like babies, swaddling up in her motherly embrace. It couldn’t care less if we are around or not. Some of my friends who have this near divine view of Nature were unhappy at my approach which can come across as devoid of emotion.

The point is it is up to all of us to remain worthwhile for this breathtakingly beautiful planet otherwise it will not think twice before actually taking our breath away. In recent years much has been said about the need for humans to become a multiplanetary species. While that sounds exciting, it misses one basic point—if we are proving to be such disastrous custodians of an absolute gem called Earth, how do we become so presumptuous as to want to go and settle another planet—say for instance Mars—that is so decidedly hostile to our fundamental existence?

Earth’s rewards are so many and so diverse that we have become indifferent to them. Despite its size it is a fragile system that needs preserving everyday. It is in our selfish interest to do that. Sentience is not necessarily Earth’s primary characteristic or purpose. It just happened to have turned out that way. It could as easily have been like Mars or Venus.

Nature constantly seeks equilibrium within its working irrespective of whether in doing so it has to permanently terminate a species or a place. It has no affections for anything. We will be well-served to be reminded of that simple reality as the world negotiates a global climate deal. We do no favors to Nature and it does not care whether we worship it or not. Our determined assault on some of her components would force Nature towards a new state of equilibrium where we may not around. It constantly makes and unmakes and remakes irrespective of whether we are there to applaud it or negotiate on its behalf.

April 21, 2017

If Shakespeare were born along the India-China border near the modern day Arunachal Pradesh, we might have been deprived of his memorable question, “What’s in a name?” Because there that which India calls Tawang China calls Wo’gyainling even though its geographic location remains the same. The renaming of Tawang by Beijing along with five other places in the region or “standardizing” them as China calls it is fraught with diplomatic dispute with India.

Beijing insists that it has the “lawful right” to rename the six. Under this “standardization” the new names are Wo’gyainling, Mila Ri, Qoidengarbo Ri, Mainquka, Bumo La and Namkapub Ri, in keeping with their latitude and longitude, for Tawang, Kra Daadi, West Siang, Siang, Anjaw and Subansiri respectively.

The Indian media sees the move as highly provocative and a response to the recent visit by the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh generally and Tawang particularly. For China, Arunachal Pradesh is South Tibet and anything Tibetan, in their eye, is Chinese.

New Delhi responded to the move with its Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Gopal Baglay saying, “renaming or inventing names of states of your neighbor do not make illegal occupation as legal.”

If you look at the renaming from the Chinese side it is nothing more than a part of a routine census exercise but from the Indian side it is nothing short of an assertion territorial sovereignty over a state regarded as a settled issue. It is hard not to conclude that the renaming is China’s way of expressing its deep displeasure over the Dalai Lama’s high profile visit.

Writing in the Global Times, widely seen as an instrument of the Chinese state, Ai Jun said on April 21, “Putting the Dalai Lama into its toolbox against China is another trick played by New Delhi lately. New Delhi would be too ingenuous to believe that the region belongs to India simply because the Dalai Lama says so.”

“It is time for India to do some serious thinking over why China announced the standardized names in South Tibet at this time. Playing the Dalai Lama card is never a wise choice for New Delhi. If India wants to continue this petty game, it will only end up in paying dearly for it,” the writer said.

New Delhi appears to have done serious thinking over the standardization and rejected it out of hand irrespective of whether it was precipitated by the Dalai Lama’s visit.

If Tawang is indeed Wo’gyainling and therefore China then by its very implication the Dalai Lama visited China. That is an absurd proposition. He could visit there with such fanfare precisely because it is well within the Indian Union. He has visited it several times before.

Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesman Lu Kang was quoted as saying that the Chinese government is conducting the second nationwide survey on geographical names, “an important task to standardize the geographical names in the languages of ethnic minority groups.”

In everyday terms, this renaming may not mean much but in so much as the Shakespearean question is relevant, there is a great deal in a name and that which the two countries call theirs do have very different implications.